Puppies and Flowers

I've avoided linking to Google's new street-level zoom map feature because basically it was everywhere but this is an interesting blog however on the company behind the pictures.
Link to blog

Pileus is an umbrella connected to the Internet to make walking in rainy days fun. Pileus has a large screen on the top surface, a built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass, and it provides two main functions; A Social Photo-sharing and A 3D Map Navigation.

Link to Wired with more pictures

Digital paper that can speak to you has been created by scientists.

Researchers from Mid Sweden University have constructed an interactive paper billboard that emits recorded sound in response to a user's touch.

The prototype display uses conductive inks, which are sensitive to pressure, and printed speakers.

Link to BBC article

Via bookofjoe.com

Limited edition USB flash drives containing The White Stripes new album, Icky Thump.

These figures have removable hats that reveal a USB port. Each USB 2.0 flash drive has a 512-megabyte capacity and are Windows and Mac compatible. The Jack and Meg figures are available separately, or you can purchase the set at a discount. They are produced in a limited edition of 3,333 Meg drives and 3,333 Jack drives.

Link to White Stripes

Not only was Rome not built in a day, but a digital model took 10 years to construct. A team of archaeologists, architects and computer specialists from Italy, the United States, Britain and Germany has just unveiled a sprawling 3D digital simulation of the ancient city as it appeared at the height of its development as the capital of the Roman Empire.

Link to c|net article

An interesting article by Adam Savage (MythBusters) on the sci-fi classic.

I'm still such a big Blade Runner fan that I watch it at least once every 18 months. I also own pretty convincing replicas of the "blade runner blaster" wielded by Harrison Ford's world-weary former cop Rick Deckard. The source material was a Steyr Mannlicher .222 target rifle magazine cover, with a Bulldog .44 carriage underneath. I can't get enough of this prop. Now, I want a working one.

Link to The Onion. Previously on Puppies and Flowers: the iPhone shuffle

Thousands of Internet radio stations and channels across North America are preparing to go silent tomorrow (6/26) as part of an industry-wide "Day of Silence". The landmark event is designed to draw attention to impending royalty rates that threaten to virtually shut down Internet radio as a medium.

Link to kurthanson.com

Xeni at boingboing.net has more links on the subject

My favorite:

What the heck is electronic mail?

That's the question posed in this Honeywell ad, which explains: "Simply put, it means high-speed information transportation.

"One of the most advanced methods is terminals talking to one another.

"Your mailbox is the terminal on your desk. Punch a key and today's correspondence and messages are displayed instantly."

Link to ComputerWorld list

iPorn.

Link to Digital Playground ShinyShiny

In case you can't find any porn. See previous post.

Link to Gizmodo

Link to GetUSB with a variety of fun USB drives.
Still not as cool as The White Stripes one.

(images: Guiliano Sargentini/Emilio Bianchi)
 

Tom Perkins had done it all. He'd made a fortune, conquered Silicon Valley, even been Danielle Steel's fifth husband for a time. His venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was an early backer of Genentech, Netscape, and Google. But when he turned 70 a few years ago, Perkins decided to do something even grander and a bit crazier: He would build the biggest, riskiest, fastest, most technologically advanced, single-hulled sailing mega yacht in the world. The 289-foot Maltese Falcon, launched in spring 2006, is that engineering dream come to life.

There's no official definition of a megayacht, but every one agrees they're longer than 250 feet and tend to be triumphs of excess, with opulent staterooms, stainless steel and leather galore, plasma TVs — even their own speedboats and jet skis. To accommodate these toys, all mega yachts used to be powerboats, for the simple reason that sailboats must be reasonably svelte. But Perkins insisted on sail power — and refused to compromise on speed or lavish appointments. The solution was to go long, since (other things being equal) the longer the hull, the faster a sailboat can go. The result is the perfect blend of ego and utility, a $130 million wonder that represents the most daring advance in sailing technology in 150 years.

Continue reading at Wired 

Found on eBay 

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen recently paid $12 million for his 40-foot long sub.
(It’s yellow. It’s a yellow submarine.)

Link to submarines for the super rich via valleywag

Pac-Man? Space Invaders? Frogger? The video games of the 1980s were played in arcades, pizza parlors and bars--and all you needed was a quarter to join in the fun.

From the time Space Invaders appeared in 1978, until game consoles took over in the mid-1990s, arcades were the center of the video gaming world. The classics that were produced in the "golden age of arcade games" are still very much alive today. You can play versions of them for free on many Internet sites or find a version that was produced for a new game console such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Nintendo's Wii.

Link to more images   Thanks Jeff J

photo: mjross 

from article:

In 2001, male Hypolimnas bolina butterflies on the Samoan islands of Savaii and Upolu were extremely rare. Just 1 percent of these butterflies -- known commonly as Blue Moon or Great Eggfly -- were male. They were under attack by the Wolbachia bacteria, a parasite passed down through the female that kills off male butterflies before they can hatch.

Last year, the numbers of males had either reached or were approaching those of females. They were helped by the development of a genetic mutation that suppresses the bacteria, sparing the males and allowing them to quickly repopulate.

"This is one of the most clear and fastest cases of evolution under natural selection," said Sylvain Charlat of University College London, whose study appears in the journal Science.  more

via Fark

previously on P&F disputing the creationist argument

photo: in2jazz 

From article:

Why the San Francisco Chronicle is a candidate to exit print

Play with me on this one: Which major American newspaper should be the first to throw up its hands and stop publishing a print product?

It's a question worth asking. This could be the worst year for newspapers since the Great Depression. The double-digit revenue declines long forecast by doomsters have arrived. While nearly all the major papers still post profits, albeit smaller than before, a few prominent ones are losing boatloads. At Hearst Newspapers' San Francisco Chronicle, according to a deposition given by James M. Asher, the company's chief legal and business development officer, losses of $330 million piled up between mid-2000 and September, 2006, better—or should I say worse?—than $1 million a week. During negotiations with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's unions, the owning Block family disclosed that the paper lost $20 million in 2006. Late last year, The Boston Globe was headed for unprofitability as well, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Read more at BusinessWeek 

photo: AliThinks 

From article:

With only a few days left until the July 15 deadline, the battle for Internet radio is running out of time. According to multiple reports, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has denied a "motion to stay" by webcasters for the impending royalty rate hike. An appeal was filed in May, along with the motion to place a hold on the Copyright Royalty Board's decision. However, the court made a brief announcement yesterday, stating the parties did not meet the standards required for a stay to be granted.

“We are pleased by this decision, which vividly demonstrates that the Copyright Royalty Judges got it right when they set royalty rates and terms for the use of music on Internet radio,” said John Simson, Executive Director of SoundExchange, in a statement. “This is a major victory for recording artists and record labels whose hard work and creativity provides the music around which the Internet radio business is built. Notwithstanding this victory, we continue to reach out to the webcasting community to reach business solutions.”  more

Related links:

From article:

Police in Derry, Pennsylvania are baffled by a June ATM robbery in which an unidentified man wearing flip flops and shorts strolled into Mastrorocco's Market and reprogrammed the cash machine to think it was dispensing dollar bills instead of twenties.

Along with a female accomplice, the crook netted over $1,540 in two visits on June 19 and 20, according to store owner Vince Mastrorocco. "They came in, they hit me the first day -- a man and a woman -- and they cleaned me out," Mastrorocco told THREAT LEVEL. "Then they came back the next day and cleaned me out again."

A sergeant with the Derry Borough Police Department they're still investigating the crime, and no arrests have been made.

Of course, THREAT LEVEL readers know exactly what happened. The machine was a Triton 9100, and like competitor Tranax, Triton printed its default administrative passcodes in its ATM service manuals, which have been widely available online.  We reported on this last September after a Virginia Beach gas station ATM (a Tranax) got hit with the same hack.

The ATM in the Derry heist was owned by the store, but operated by a company called Cardtronics. COO Mike Clinard says in a statement that it was Mastrorocco's responsibility to change the passcode from its default, which is (I kid you not) 123456.  more

 

Reality Desktop

Windows interface moved to real life.
Do you remember what is your Computer Desktop? It's a metaphor
of real desk.

Link to video 

Snappy, fresh interface with stacking, folding and crumpling abiliities.

Anand Agarawala presents BumpTop, a fresh user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3D extreme. In this physics-driven universe, important files finally get the weight they deserve via an oddly satisfying resizing feature, and the drudgery of file organization becomes a freewheeling playground full of crumpled documents and clipping-covered "walls." Worried your laptop's desktop will descend into the same disorder as its coffee-mug-strewn real-life equivalent? Fear not: BumpTop has a snappy solution for that messy problem, too. 

Link to video 

Seems to be a marketing site for an Australian magazine publisher, amusing site.

Link 

Gordon Bennet, not to be confused with the English expression, makes these wonderful robot sculptures. via blort

Tables turned: Madigan flees a throng of reporters

This was an incredibly stupid move, especially as she refused credentials four times from the organisers. Hope for her sakes, she has up-to-date security on her laptop.

Link to YouTube clip 

From the Register:

A rare moment of drama came to Defcon when a woman fled the conference after being identified in front of hundreds of other attendees as an undercover television reporter on a crusade to expose collusion between cyber criminals and federal agents.

The woman, identified by conference organizers as a producer for Dateline NBC, bolted a few minutes after a panel called Spot the Fed began. After being tipped off about the covert operation - and knowing the producer was in the audience - organizers announced to the standing-room only crowd that the contest was being changed to "spot the undercover reporter."

Defcon founder Jeff Moss told the crowd that there was a real, covert reporter in their very midst and then asked if attendees thought she should be ejected for violating Defcon rules concerning the taking of photos and videos of conference attendees. Before the audience could respond, the woman bolted from the room and was quickly given chase by a throng of reporters.

For years, Defcon has imposed strict conditions on those attending. Video and photos are not permitted unless the subjects have given their permission. Those covering the event for news organizations must apply for a press credential and are subjected to greater enforcement of the privacy rules.

Defcon "is like Switzerland, its neutral territory," said a senior conference staff member who goes by the name Priest. "The feds come in and they don't arrest us. We don't turn their phones into 976 numbers," he added, referring to the telephone prefix used by phone sex operators and other to automatically charge the caller a set fee.

Priest said organizers were tipped off about the producer's plans by someone who was thoroughly familiar with the story. According to Priest, the producer told the informant that "the people in Kansas would be very interested in knowing what was happening at Defcon."

Organizers were able to confirm that the woman had a camera in a small black bag that allowed her to surreptitiously video tape people attending the show. She hoped to tape people admitting to breaking the law and then attempt to tie them to federal agents who also attended the show. At one point, she was observed panning a room with her hidden camera.
Picture of reporter in car as she drives away

The woman was identified as Michelle Madigan, an associate producer for Dateline. As she exited the conference room, a Defcon staff member suggested she accept a press credential and continue covering the conference.

"Like a thief in the night, she decided to flee," said Priest.

The woman declined to comment at least four times as several dozen people, many of them reporters, followed her through the parking lot of the Riviera Hotel, where the conference is being held. She eventually got into a silver Infinity and drove off.

After being tipped off, conference organizers asked Madigan on four occasions if she might want a press credential. Each time, she declined. Once she arrived at the conference, organizers kept her under surveillance.

Despite the unusual scrutiny Madigan received - and the fact that her picture and alleged plan had been posted on Wired and other publications for hours prior to her outing - the producer never suspected her cover was blown, said Priest.

"Not very bright," he said.

Kevin Mitnick

From marvequin: 

1. Kevin Mitnick.

Mitnick is perhaps synonymous with Hacker. The Department of Justice still refers to him as "the most wanted computer criminal in United States history." His accomplishments were memorialized into two Hollywood movies: Takedown and Freedom Downtime.

Mitnick got his start by exploiting the Los Angeles bus punch card system and getting free rides. Then similar to Steve Wozniak, of Apple, Mitnick tried Phone Phreaking. Mitnick was first convicted for hacking into the Digital Equipment Corporation's computer network and stealing software.

Mitnick then embarked on a two and a half year coast to coast hacking spree. He has stated that he hacked into computers, scrambled phone networks, stole corporate secrets and hacked into the national defense warning system. His fall came when he hacked into fellow computer expert and hacker Tsutomu Shimomura's home computer.

Farmers in Isle of Ruegen, Northern Germany have used Global Positioning System (GPS) to plough a huge pig image (37,000 square metres) on a cornfield. Not the best quality of crop art, but looks cute…

Link via spulch 

Very little coverage of this story in the US Media.

Link to YouTube clip of a story CTV ran on the banner unfurling

From CBC article: 

Three Canadians arrested by Chinese police following a protest at the Great Wall against China's presence in Tibet have been released.

The British Columbian activists — Lhadon Tethong, Sam Price and Melanie Raoul — left China after their release on Wednesday and flew into Hong Kong.

Lhadon Tethong, the driving force behind this protest, has generated a lot of online buzz through the smart use of internet technologies, blogging, live video etc. 

See also:

Technology for Tibet Trumps Tyranny!

Tech-savvy pro-Tibet protesters get message across

From London to Lhasa Students for a Free Tibet UK blog their stories, thoughts, and actions.

Drunk driving defendant says he needs the source code to the Intoxilyzer 5000EN to fight the charges in court. Without seeing the code he claims it may just be a random number generator.

He won the argument. This is unfortunate because typically, CMI, the maker of the Intoxilyzer 5000EN refuses to release the source and the case is subsequently thrown out. like what happened two years ago in Florida:

"Unless the defense can see how the breathalyzer works," the judges wrote, the device amounts to "nothing more than a 'mystical machine' used to establish an accused's guilt.

It appears that CMI will have to comply with the Court order now.

Here is an unrelated but another funny ruse that apparently worked.

Photo: elindbloom

From news article:

Bay Area zero-emission advocates got their first test ride Thursday on a zippy new all-electric motor scooter that can take two commuters on a silent freeway ride that will cost them just pennies in electrical power.

The plug-in hybrid automobile crowd, in the news these days because of advances in the technology of fuel-efficient hybrids, gathered at San Francisco's Presidio to see the latest wrinkle in emission-free transportation - an electric motor scooter called the Vectrix that can whiz along at 60 miles an hour.

At $11,000, the Vectrix may be a bit pricey, but it is a first of sorts and it will probably appeal to the same high-income people who have ordered the $100,000 all-electric Tesla sports car. "We want to get to the right consumer demographics," said Jeff Morrill, Vectrix's managing director for marketing. "It's for urban commuting, and it targets environmentalists, active (electric power) enthusiasts."

photo: htmlnerd

From ZDNet article:

German scientists claim to have broken the light-speed barrier, which could blow away the known limitations of modern networking, but the technology is unlikely to make it into a product--if at all--until most administrators working today have retired.

Exceeding the speed of light, approximately 300,000km per second, is supposed to be completely impossible. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object through the light barrier.

But two German physicists claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the strange phenomenon known as "quantum tunneling." 

Adobe, very clever (as usual) and witty to boot. 

From the SJMercury news:

The code is cracked.

And for anyone who thought a simple message was being transmitted by the rotating disks atop the Adobe tower in downtown San Jose, boy, were you wrong.

The message of San Jose Semaphore is the entire text of the Thomas Pynchon book, "The Crying of Lot 49."

The solution was discovered by two Silicon Valley tech workers, Bob Mayo and Mark Snesrud, who received a commendation at San Jose City Hall today.

Link

RMF Radio Station in Poland Occupies 21st Century Facility

Found at Deputy Dog

Satellite picture here 

Oh crap. Link 

From c|net: 

Joybubbles (the legal name of the former Joe Engressia since 1991), a blind genius with perfect pitch who accidentally found he could make free phone calls by whistling tones and went on to play a pivotal role in the 1970s subculture of "phone phreaks," died on Aug. 8 in Minneapolis.

He was 58, though he had chosen in 1988 to remain 5 forever, and had the toys and teddy bears to prove it. The cause of death has not been determined, said Steven Gibb, a friend and the executor of the Joybubbles estate.

Joybubbles, who was blind at birth, was a famous part of what began as a scattered, socially awkward group of precocious teens and post-teens fascinated with exploring the phone system. It could then be seen as the world's biggest, most complex, most interesting computer, and foiling the phone system passed for high-tech high jinks in the 1970s.

TOKYO - Lose a game of chess to a computer, and you could bruise your ego. Lose an arm-wrestling match to a Japanese arcade machine, and you could break your arm.

Distributor Atlus Co. said Tuesday it will remove all 150 "Arm Spirit" arm wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms grappling with the machine's mechanized appendage.

"The machine isn't that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it," said Atlus spokeswoman Ayano Sakiyama, calling the recall "a precaution."

"We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way," she said. The company was investigating the incidents and checking the machines for any signs of malfunction.

Players of "Arm Spirit" advance through 10 levels, battling a French maid, drunken martial arts master and a Chihuahua before reaching the final showdown with a professional wrestler.

The arcade machine is not distributed overseas.

Link 

Link to YouTube 

Thanks Brady! 

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

It's a "comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS and push-to-talk systems," says Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor and longtime surveillance expert.

Link to Wired article by Ryan Singel via boingboing

The Twingo. Little did its creators know it would become the cause of so much marital strife

From article: 

Hundreds of angry Dutch women have complained to car manufacturer Renault after receiving handwritten letters purporting to come from a unknown admirer who called them "darling", suggested meeting soon for a drink and signed themselves "lots of love, M".

Some 30,000 letters were sent out - and Renault is now writing 30,000 apologies.

The letter was in fact part of an advertising campaign for a new version of their car, the Twingo, to be launched next month in the Netherlands where it has proved a particularly big seller.

Link to article

What is this about?

It's about finding an answer to that age-old question, the one that we have all asked ourselves:

What would happen if you shipped 20 unassembled old-timey wooden fishing lure kits off to be finished by a bunch of artists? It turns out that the answer is CRANKbait! Lures of Distinction.

Shown here by Hugh Macdonald, see them all here.

Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing fame painted one too.

Why, for the love of Christ, do they have to have pink ones to appeal to women? 

Link to Taser

Clip from NYTimes: 

The new C2, as the weapon is called, looks more like a large disposable razor than a gun, comes in a variety of colors and is $350, all of which Taser executives believe will persuade women to add the weapon to their checklist for the evening: lipstick, wallet, keys, Taser.

From MacNN: 

Apple boss Steve Jobs today introduced the widely rumored and highly anticipated touch-sensitive iPod, codenamed iPod touch. The iPod looks nearly identical to the iPhone in appearance, with a large screen and a customary 'home' button at the bottom. "It features our revolutionary multi-touch interface that you've come to know and love on the iPhone," said Jobs. "If you've used an iPhone you'll feel at home, it's exactly the same." The company also unveiled a new application specific to iPod touch and the iPhone, the iTunes WiFi music store. The new store allows users to preview and download songs via WiFi in the same fashion as the original iTunes software. Apple will offer the iPod touch in two configurations with 8GB and 16GB storage capacities for $300 and $400, respectively. Both models are slated for shipment "in just a few weeks" but before the end of the month.

The 3.5-inch widescreen display displays photos just like the iPhone, and supports Apple's "pinch-to-zoom" technique as well as the customary slide for unlocking the device.

The iPod touch features CoverFlow technology, and includes a WiFi meter in the top-left corner of the screen to monitor signal strength. The new iPod's wireless capability includes 802.11 b/g support, and utilizes the company's Safari Web browser to login to public wireless networks as well as surf the Web.

Apple's iPod touch supports YouTube in a fashion similar to the iPhone, and boasts a battery life of 22 hours for audio playback or five hours of video playback.

Airship On The Long Course

Car Shoes

Link to more illustrations 

Clip:

Internet auction website eBay on Monday withdrew an unusual second-hand sale item, the country of Belgium, which had attracted an offer of 10 million euros (13.9 million dollars).

"Belgium, a kingdom in three parts" was posted on the Belgian ebay site as offering "plenty of choice" despite the caveat that it comes with "300 billion of National Debt."

Link to article

NASA Airbrushed UFOs - Lunar Base Towers

Link to YouTube 

A Cambridge team says the creature owes its existence to a genetic quirk that offers some recompense for its prolonged celibacy.

Many asexual organisms have died out because they cannot adapt to changes in the natural world.

But an evolutionary trick allows this pond-dweller to survive when conditions change, researchers report in Science.

   
The animal is a tiny invertebrate known as a bdelloid rotifer. It lives in freshwater pools. If deprived of water, it survives in a desiccated state until water becomes available again.  continue reading

via newshelton 

Clip:

The disc-shaped device can take off vertically from any surface, land practically anywhere, and if it accidentally contacts a building or cliff, it won't explode into a fireball, like those rascally helicopters.

These features could make the aircraft uniquely suited to flying in urban war zones, aiding with search and rescue in disaster areas, inspecting crops and pipelines, and taking aerial photographs (read: surveillance).

Read more

Clip:

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The Frankfurt Book Fair has an indicator to help publishers gauge public interest in the new offerings presented at the annual exhibition -- the unofficial "most stolen book" index.

Bild am Sonntag and Germany's ZDF television have come up with lists of titles most stolen from 15 leading German publishers' stands set up in the Frankfurt trade fair grounds.

"The most-stolen books are usually the most-sold later on," Claudia Hanssen of the Goldmann Verlag publishing house told Bild am Sonntag newspaper, which published a list of the 10 most stolen German-language books this year.

Continue reading

Clip from c|net:

A new Senate bill would protect not only telephone companies from lawsuits claiming illegal cooperation with the National Security Agency. It would retroactively immunize e-mail providers, search engines, Internet service providers and instant-messaging services too.

The broad language appears in new legislation that a Senate committee approved by a 13-to-2 vote on Thursday during a meeting closed to the press and public. It enjoys the support of the panel's Democrats and Republicans.

It goes further in crafting an impenetrable legal shield than similar proposals in the House of Representatives, such as the so-called Restore Act (PDF), which immunizes only "communications service providers." Bowing to pressure from President Bush, House Democrats postponed a vote on the Restore Act last week.

The broader Senate bill (PDF) would sweep in Web sites, e-mail providers and more. "My suspicion is the scope of the immunity provision is the most revealing way to assess the scope of the underlying authority," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Link to c|net article 

The Raw Story is reporting that Comcast has a pricing structure for installing FISA wiretaps:

Comcast, which is among the nation's largest telecommunication companies, charges $1,000 to install a FISA wiretap and $750 for each additional month authorities want to keep an eye on suspects, according to the company's Handbook for Law Enforcement. Secrecy News obtained the document and published it Monday.

Link to the raw story report

Physicists at UC Berkeley say they have produced the world's smallest radio out of a single carbon nanotube that is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Professor Alex Zettl led a team that developed the minuscule filament, which can be tuned to receive AM or FM transmissions.

The first song it played? "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos. Eric Clapton's unmistakable guitar riff can be heard on a scratchy recording of the nanoradio's output posted by Zettl online.

Listen to the 'Layla' recording Courtesy Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A Florida man who was inspired to help crime victims by a super hero has invented a pepper-spray bracelet that shoots a stream of chemicals at the flick of a wrist.

Link with more photos 

From article: 

TOKYO - Musicians of the world are getting a new kind of artistic freedom with technology that eliminates the challenging chore of tuning.

Robotics technology developed by German company Tronical Gmbh in partnership with Gibson Guitar Corp. enables Gibson's newest Les Paul model to tune itself in about two seconds.

For users who purchase the add-on technology, the guitar recognizes pitch. Then, its processor directs motors on its six tuning pegs to tighten or loosen the strings accordingly. Tronical has offered its "Powertune System" online and through retailers in Germany since March, according to the company's Web site.

Read more

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- Members of a Czech art group who hacked into television broadcasting with images of a hoax nuclear explosion were charged and will have to stand trial, a state prosecutor said Thursday.
art.nukeblast.jpg

The six members of the Prague-based Ztohoven group were charged last month with spreading false information and face up to three years in jail if convicted, said Dusan Ondracek, the state prosecutor in the northern town of Trutnov, who is in charge of the case.

On June 17, viewers of a Czech television channel watching a Web cam program monitoring weather in various Czech mountain resorts could see a nuclear explosion taking place in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains in the northern Czech Republic.

Link to article

Link to YouTube clip 

Jaysus, gotta get me one of these. iTase? 

LAS VEGAS - A handy new holster from Taser International Inc. holds not only your stun gun but a music player too.

Link to article 

found image

From The Register:

A Polish teenager allegedly turned the tram system in the city of Lodz into his own personal train set, triggering chaos and derailing four vehicles in the process. Twelve people were injured in one of the incidents.

The 14-year-old modified a TV remote control so that it could be used to change track points, The Telegraph reports. Local police said the youngster trespassed in tram depots to gather information needed to build the device. The teenager told police that he modified track setting for a prank.

"He studied the trams and the tracks for a long time and then built a device that looked like a TV remote control and used it to manoeuvre the trams and the tracks," said Miroslaw Micor, a spokesman for Lodz police.

"He had converted the television control into a device capable of controlling all the junctions on the line and wrote in the pages of a school exercise book where the best junctions were to move trams around and what signals to change.

"He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set, but it was lucky nobody was killed. Four trams were derailed, and others had to make emergency stops that left passengers hurt. He clearly did not think about the consequences of his actions," Micor added.

Transport command and control systems are commonly designed by engineers with little exposure or knowledge about security using commodity electronics and a little native wit. The apparent ease with which Lodz's tram network was hacked, even by these low standards, is still a bit of an eye opener.

Problems with the signalling system on Lodz's tram network became apparent on Tuesday when a driver attempting to steer his vehicle to the right was involuntarily taken to the left. As a result the rear wagon of the train jumped the rails and collided with another passing tram. Transport staff immediately suspected outside interference.

The youth, described by his teachers as an electronics buff and exemplary student, faces charges at a special juvenile court of endangering public safety.

Link

Photo: Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing

What a concept!

From Flickr: 

Photographer Jason Tozer was asked to take some pictures of bubbles by Creative Review magazine, using the new Sony Alpha camera. More details on how he achieved the shots will be posted at the CR Blog.

Thanks Kevin. 

This sounds too good to be true, but Reuters is reporting:

Tired of petrol prices rising daily at the pump? A Japanese company has invented an electric-powered, and environmentally friendly, car that it says runs solely on water.

Genepax unveiled the car in the western city of Osaka on Thursday, saying that a liter (2.1 pints) of any kind of water -- rain, river or sea -- was all you needed to get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 km (50 miles).

"The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water to top up from time to time," Genepax CEO Kiyoshi Hirasawa told local broadcaster TV Tokyo.

"It does not require you to build up an infrastructure to recharge your batteries, which is usually the case for most electric cars," he added.

Once the water is poured into the tank at the back of the car, the a generator breaks it down and uses it to create electrical power, TV Tokyo said.

Whether the car makes it into showrooms remains to be seen. Genepax said it had just applied for a patent and is hoping to collaborate with Japanese auto manufacturers in the future.

Most big automakers, meanwhile, are working on fuel-cell cars that run on hydrogen and emit -- not consume -- water.

Link to article.

Hilarious look at the life of a tech support person versus the evil Sales Guy, a la You Suck at Photoshop.

Link to clip.  [Via]

Very cool indeed.

Learn about how the video was made and the 3D plotting technologies behind it.

Thanks Noah.

1. Multicolr Search Lab

Select up to 10 colors and get image results that use that palette. Pretty cool.

We extracted the colours from 3 million “interesting” Flickr images. Using our visual similarity technology you can navigate the collection by colour.

Link to Multicolr Search Lab

2. CompFight

Unsure how this site does it, but it generates search results twice as fast a search on Flickr itself, even displays the pixel dimensions of the largest version of the image available. I use this site ALL the time.

Link to CompFight

Nifty little advertising gimmick.

Thanks Noah.

Shown here: Moronic Acid

Other names include:

Arsole

Yes, believe it or not, there is actually a molecule called Arsole... and it's a ring! It is the arsenic equivalent of pyrrole, and although it is rarely found in its pure form, it is occasionally seen as a sidegroup in the form of organic arsolyls. …

Bastardane

Buckminster Fullerene

This is the famous soccerball-shaped molecule that won its discoverers the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1996. It is named after the architect Buckminster Fuller who designed the geodesic dome exhibited at Expo '67 in Montreal, from which Sir Harry Kroto got the idea how 60 Carbon atoms could be arranged in a perfectly symmetrical fashion. …

Fukalite

This wonderfully named mineral gets its name from the Fuka mine in the Fuka region of southern Japan. It is very rare, and is a form of calcium silico-carbonate, with formula Ca₄Si₂O₆(CO₃)(OH,F) ₂. …

Found here.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer (17 mile) long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September - and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C (-456.25 F). Here is a collection of photographs from CERN, showing various stages of completion of the LHC and several of its larger experiments (some over seven stories tall), over the past several years. (27 photos total)

Link to article and more photos.

In case you need a laugh:
Remember, it takes a college degree to fly a plane but only a high school diploma to fix one.
 
After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form, called a 'Gripe Sheet' which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft..
The mechanics correct the problems; document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the Gripe Sheets before the next flight.  
 
Never let it be said that Aussie ground crews lack a sense of humour.
Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Qantas' pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions
recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.
 
By the way, Qantas is the only major airline that has never, ever, had an accident.
 
 
P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
 
P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.
 
P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.
 
P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.
 
P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
 
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
 
P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.
 
P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what friction locks are for.
 
P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
 
P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.
 
P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.
 
P: Aircraft handles funny............ (I love this one!)
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.
 
P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
 
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
 
And the best one for last..................
P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget.

Thanks Donna!

This amazing Wifi T-Shirt illuminates with 802.11b or 802.11g showing the precise strength. This T-Shirt uses EL technology. What is EL? Simply explained, EL (stand for Electro-Luminescence) is paper thin panels that radiate light. This technology is superior to other light emitting technologies because it is light weight, flexible, durable, generates no heat, waterproof and landfill friendly because it's production uses no hazardous materials.

Link to site

The team at Image Metrics - which produced the animation for the Grand Theft Auto computer game - then recreated the gestures, movement by movement, in a model. The aim was to overcome the traditional difficulties of animating a human face, for instance that the skin looks too shiny, or that the movements are too symmetrical.

Link